“Tesla’s electric prototype will be capable of traveling the low end of what transportation veterans consider to be “long-haul” trucking, according to Scott Perry, an executive at Miami-based fleet operator Ryder System Inc (R.N). Perry said he met with Tesla officials earlier this year to discuss the technology at the automaker’s manufacturing facility in Fremont, California.”

“Perry said Tesla’s efforts are centered on an electric big-rig known as a “day cab” with no sleeper berth, capable of traveling about 200 to 300 miles with a typical payload before recharging.”

“No, we will manufacture that ourselves. Most of that semi is actually made out of Model 3 parts by the way. It’s actually using a bunch of Model 3 motors, without revealing too much about the future of it, so we are able to use a very high volume vehicle, and then combine several motors to have (pause) I think it’s actually going to have a very good gross margin like…not something that the other…it’s like you can’t do that with a traditional truck. So effectively (the Semi-Truck) was just a very compelling product that has low unit cost.”

“Most freight shipments by value and tonnage move less than 250 miles. In 2002, more than half the value of all Commodity Flow Survey shipments ($4.5 trillion), and 80 percent of the weight (9 billion tons), moved in local and short-haul shipments”

“By weight, only 5 percent of shipments travel more than 1,000 miles.”

As you can see from the numbers that 5 percent that travels long distance has a very high value per ton though. But the point is with a viable short haul EV truck fleet you can move around 80% (don’t know what it is in 2017) of all freight tonnage with a much more efficient powertrain giving you the most bang for the buck. EV long haul trucking is the last mile and will be the icing on the cake.

Who cares about the particulars of how to charge the things (or swap batteries) considering the current alternative is to fill the twin saddle 100 to 150 gallon tanks with effing diesel fuel? Most commercial fleet truck operations have their own diesel dispensaries, so it’s not that big of a leap to think that they will install their own (twin/quad?) SuperChargers. You don’t hear ’em complaining about recharging their electric forklifts every night.

Diesel fuel is just about the worst kind of hydrocarbon pollution for groundwater. Never mind the air pollution diesels spew into the atmosphere, or the noise… The faster diesel dies the better for you, me, and our grandkids.

It’s not like you need something new to charge at these rates – the fundamental circuit design would be almost identical to that used to charge your laptop – just scaled up… a lot.

More challenging (and more expensive) is going to be supplying all that energy.

Overall, a much more practical high power charging system would be to use a large reservior of electrical energy (ie a very big battery) which would use a relatively common (and therefore relatively cheap) supply to ‘trickle charge’ it ready for connecting – simply and by DC – to a vehicle requiring charging. Aside from simplicity, this design would allow much faster charging rates for the money.

It would also make it much easier to provide the electrical energy needed from renewable sources.

“Overall, a much more practical high power charging system would be to use a large reservior of electrical energy (ie a very big battery) which would use a relatively common (and therefore relatively cheap) supply to ‘trickle charge’ it ready for connecting – simply and by DC – to a vehicle requiring charging. Aside from simplicity, this design would allow much faster charging rates for the money.”

Using one battery pack to charge another? No, that would make it more expensive. Now the fleet operator has to buy or rent two battery packs instead of one.

For its Supercharger stations, Tesla does use on-site battery packs to smooth out demand spikes, and thus avoids unnecessary demand charges. But Tesla doesn’t regularly use one battery pack to charge another, because that is unnecessarily expensive. It wears out battery packs for no good reason.

Instead, Tesla ensures the Supercharging station is supplied with sufficient power from the grid, because that’s the cheapest way to provide power 24/7.**

Fleet operators installing BEV semi truck chargers would be advised to do the same.

**Those “solar canopies” at some Supercharger stations provide, if my napkin math is right, maybe 1-2% of the total power for a busy station, at best. They may well provide a greater percentage of power at lonely, rarely visited stations… but optimally, the fleet operator will install BEV semi truck chargers only where they will be used frequently!

“Most commercial fleet truck operations have their own diesel dispensaries, so it’s not that big of a leap to think that they will install their own (twin/quad?) SuperChargers. You don’t hear ’em complaining about recharging their electric forklifts every night.”

Exactly.

Tesla will no doubt build a couple, or a few, BEV semi chargers to demonstrate the technology, but I just don’t see Tesla building out a network of semi truck chargers (or Superchargers) to support semi truck sales, in the same way Tesla has built out an extensive network of passenger car Supercharger to support car sales.

It will be left up to individual fleet owners to decide where to install chargers for any BEV semi trucks they buy.

Yeah, if Elon would drop all those silly Boring Co. ideas, maybe he’d have time to work on things which are more practical. But then, I’m far from convinced that an over-the-road BEV semi tractor is practical.

We’ll see, but despite what Elon said in some of those quotes above, I’m still predicting this will be just a concept vehicle cum technology demonstrator, and not a production-intent vehicle.

I do agree that they’re not meeting their M3 delivery targets and want to proclaim several hundred plus have been delivered before this reveal event so that’s a great reason to delay it…

With the particular chosen date, I believe it’s highly calculated…He tweeted this one day after Apple’s reveal event which stated the iPhone X starts it preorders 12:01am PST on 10/27…Why wait a day to announce you ask? These are fairly major events so I believe takes time to coordinate these events…If Tesla starts their event around 9pm-ish PST like the M3 and it lasts an hour then you could order the iPhone X a couple hours after the event ends…Most of those who plan on pre-ordering will already be sitting at home anxiously waiting for the clock to turn midnight PST anyways…

Major marketing buzz, many stories will showcase both Tesla’s reveal that and the iPhone X is available for pre-order in the same article…

Yes, you see behind the smoke and mirrors game to create a reality distortion field. I guess he will claim Model S & X interest will have gone up by 1800 the next day, because you know, there is absolutely overlap between the Trucker class and his current Model S & X owners. Not!
The Real Reason is there has to be a Misdirection Distraction for earnings call, when there a huge September YoY decline and Q3 miss, and clear Peak Model S & X worldwide, and maybe Model 3 production issues.

Darn! You’ve single-handedly exposed Musk for the charlatan trickster that he is! Now that you’ve unmasked his clever ruse, will you show up at the bankruptcy hearings to reveal your true identity and notify him that such an outcome is the inevitable end of financial villainy?!

Hey man, if you are going to argue with religious people, you’re even worse than they are. You’re right, nothing about Tesla makes sense. If you really can sell all you can manufacture, why waste time and much needed money developing model x, model 3, model y, model truck, that imperial super star destroyer i’m so fond of? why not just milk the cow, build, you know, more factories, milk some more, build so more new factories, and then eventually, develop another car, cheaper this time, in blue. Problem with religious people is they will bring something like, well, because Musk said he wants to save the world. Man, really love it when they write. oh, Musk said… lolololol, just like a real prophet yeah? I understand Mr Musk needs to build hype in order to help his company. It’s just the way startups work in this stupid world of ours. It’s the “Musk said” crowd I don’t understand

Don’t usually read tesla stuff. Just came in here to see if they had anything interesting about that truck. If only teslians would do the same and keep out of other articles… all that bmw/Vw/mercedes/hyunday/nissan/gm/anythingwith4wheelsreally bashing gets really frustrating.

Yes, Musk is treated a lot as if he Moses leading us to the promised land. You think that is patently ridiculous.

But Mercedes head notes that “Musk made a lot of promises and he mostly delivered.” So he is a lot like Moses. Moses in the bible got carried away and did some mighty dumb things too. (He also ran late all the time).

So in a way, Musk IS Moses. Continuing the analogy, you are like the naysayer in the movie “The Ten Commandments” the scoundrel that that keeps talking trash about Moses, saying he is a fool, and everybody should turn around and march back to Egypt and enjoy their chains.

Well, enjoy your chains to Big Oil and Big Auto. As for me, with a little financial luck, I will go off grid in a few years and power up my Model 3 with sunlight.

I don't need to have a financial motive to be interested in the EV revolution, nor in the one company which is doing more than all the others put together to advance that tech revolution.

I don't need to fill my comments with half-truths, lies, and FUD, either. The Truth serves me just fine, and it leaves me free to criticize Musk and Tesla when I think they deserve it — but only when they deserve it.

So you have Zero financial stake in TSLA stock. So YOU are the bullying fool who lies to accuse people of being Shorters, And never being willing to do basic Math to realize InsideEVs figures that show Peak Model S & X worldwide, lack of nonUS sales to Intl end user customer, failure to take real ownership (changing its mktg name as multiple govt have asked) of Autopilot misperception leading to FL crash which was the 1st fatality (that was the poor sap son of China owner 4 months earlier – Not a word from Musk or Tesla abt that one). I guess Chinese lives don’t matter, well they Hell Yeah do when 65% of Aug EV sales were there, and Tencent 5% ownership stake may have helped your 2017 Q1&2 unit reporting. Wake up man, no matter how much you are a Musk maid.

We can play this game, do you have proof Tesla met their delivery goals? I’m a M3 reservation and Tesla stock holder; they are a hype machine and will announce to the world when goals are met and are quiet when they’re not…Tesla/Musk has been quiet and their next update on M3 deliveries will most likley be something like “we were off to a slower than expected start but now fixed things” in the upcoming weeks…Deliveries are being loosely reported on reddit and while obviously not everyone is one reddit or even wants to announce they have one, the ones who do aren’t saying they were delivered are reporting their M3s were delivered along with a very small grouping of other M3s, not by the hundred or even dozens…

So, just a trickle being produced so far. I believe it. There will undoubtably be problems to iron out before they can ramp up to mass production. I wonder if they’re up to producing a few cars a day yet?

I was impressed they did deliver some cars on time, but have always expected manufacturing wouldn’t ramp up as smooth and fast as they hope.

Musk said “produce or deliver” 100 in August and 1500 in Sept…Based off past history, if 100 were produced last month, Tesla would announce that to the world…

There’s now a Cleantechnica story literally posted a half hour ago which I’m sure will be posted on insideevs any hour now…On the M3 forum, someone posted they’re expecting to receive their car in October…Is a spaceX employee but non-Tesla owner…Someone followed up stating that was the first reported non-Tesla owning employee report…I’ll be the first to cross my fingers that’s true…

I’m still thinking local routes are the way to start. Postal carriers, delivery services, campus shuttles, distributors routes, etc.
I understand he wants the big goal first, but I’d take a more cautious route and prove reliability there first, than have to listen to a bunch of O&O’s say that they can’t afford it, and the rest of the things EV detractors use to say about cars.

“I’m still thinking local routes are the way to start. Postal carriers, delivery services, campus shuttles, distributors routes, etc.”

Well, there are already BEV delivery vans and the like, such as the Nissan e-NV200. They are not selling well, as the cost/benefit analysis for those is marginal at best. If the cost/benefit made sense, then UPS and FedEx would already be using them for local deliveries, and the Post Office would at least have a few test fleets trying them out.

I don’t believe that the price and longevity of batteries is yet good enough for BEV semi trucks to replace diesel semi trucks. Note that Elon is talking about fully autonomous BEV semi trucks, which means he’s not planning on near-term production, despite the hype in the various quotes in this article. He’s thinking about what could be made after fully autonomous vehicles are allowed on the roads nationwide, and probably he’s thinking about how much battery prices will have fallen by then.

There is a huge potential for cost savings in long-distance trucking. The cost of diesel fuel alone is, for an independent trucker, about half his annual expenses. For fleet operations I would guess it’s not much different, or perhaps it’s even worse for fleet operations.

Replacing diesel with electricity to power heavy trucks would represent a potentially enormous savings. And Tesla does have a clever sales strategy: Selling the truck, but renting the battery pack. That would allow any trucking fleet to buy BEV trucks without having to invest in buying the expensive battery packs up front.

But the cost/benefit analysis must work for both Tesla and the trucking fleet. Perhaps in a few years, it will. But today, in 2017, I seriously question that it does. If it did, then it seems to me that UPS and FedEx and Wal*Mart and other large trucking fleets would already be buying BEV semi tractors in large numbers.

A truck is a tool bloody hell. Its forms are defined by its function. If not the case and designed to look like a “beast” then it is the 0-60mph story allover again. That is useless except to flatter vanity of 1st world customers with regression issues but hardly a sustainable product in the transportation business.

Also, an electric truck must be barely more complex to design/engineer than a toaster right ? I understand however this product as a possible outlet for gigafactory production.

“Also, an electric truck must be barely more complex to design/engineer than a toaster right ?”

Yeah, Elon’s tweets on this subject don’t make any sense at all. Making a semi tractor out of Model 3 parts? Okay, let’s just skip right past the Franken-truck vision this conjures up, of a semi tractor body cobbled together out of Model 3 body parts bolted or welded together…

I’ll buy the idea that Tesla can use Model 3 motors and battery packs for a functional semi tractor. But the rest of it? A semi tractor frame (or unibody), the driveshaft, axles, wheels… all need to be far larger and more robust than what a small car like the Model 3 needs! The idea of putting Model 3 wheels on a semi tractor is frankly comical.

And of course there are many things a semi tractor needs which Tesla doesn’t make. Is Tesla going to make its own fifth wheels? Of course not, they’ll buy those from a truck parts supplier. Ditto the truck wheels and tires.

Elon’s claim that this concept truck is going to be entirely made in-house… well, that’s obviously just hype. No doubt Tesla will make a prototype body for the two copies of this truck. But otherwise, it seems almost certain that Tesla will be using as many off-the-shelf parts as possible. No point in wasting R&D resources on a concept vehicle, especially when Tesla has much more important things for its R&D department to be working on… such as the Model Y.

2017-08 sales of Plugin & Electric vehicles stands at 93383 vehicles so far with the report from only 8 countries. Still France, Germany, Japan are yet to report. August meets its 91000+ mark to help reach the 1 million mark for 2017. Easily August will reach the 100000 + and may overtake the all time high of 103000 in 2016-12.

Treating M3 parts as a commodity product and building the semi as a collection of these parts mirrors the computer industry. The semi is the equivalent of the mainframe and the M3 represents the PC/386 instruction set-based microprocessor. The cost and complexity of the proprietary mainframe architecture can’t compete with a cluster of commodity CPUs.

There are multiple fundamental questions that remain to be answered. Such as what the economic model is for long-distance freight hauling. There is an oft-repeated but indirect quote of Elon claiming Teslas BEV semi tractor will best diesel for range. If that’s actually what Elon said, then how will that be achieved? Battery swapping? Relay teams of semi tractors?

I’m guessing it will not be battery swapping… but that’s just my guess. Teams of 200-300 mile BEV semi trucks might be economical… if they can recharge fast enough to make, let’s say, at least two round trips per day, and that’s a big “if”. So I think all that is very much still up in the air.

I’m amazed Musk just doesn’t focus on the task at hand and build up the Model 3 into a genuine success. Seems like a bit of a distraction but then again he’s built billion dollar companies and i havent so what would i know? Hope he achieves his vision!

Thanks for the correction. So 14,500 plugin buses and trucks were sold in 2017-08 and they could have displaced significant amount of Diesel. These vehicles will also be counted at the end of the year in total plugin vehicle sales.

More than 1 million LSEV (Low Speed Electric Vehicles) were sold in China in 2016. These vehicles use lead acid batteries and have less than 100 km range.

Norway is only 4,368 (1,025 of them are used imported vehicles)
China is only 53,500 (14,500 are public vehicles like buses & trucks)
Still August is looking much better at this point and will cross 90000.

Are your figures really correct, in that freaking 60-65% of all electrified vehicles sold in August were to China, and the rest outside the US was a paltry anemic total of less than 12K (~15%). If so, that Is Absolute certainty that the Tesla Model S & X quartetly numbers are fishy and fuzzy, because they don’t report Intl numbers And China market share is proven very low. So the numbers like 12 of 22k for Q2 being non-USA Does NOT add up.

Darn! You’ve single-handedly exposed Musk for the charlatan trickster that he is! Now that you’ve unmasked his clever ruse, will you show up at the bankruptcy hearings to reveal your true identity and notify him that such an outcome is the inevitable end of financial villainy?!

Yeah no “evil”. Just a company attempting to accomplish a shift in archaic perceptions about how and what things need to be done to not only successful, but also paradigm-shifting. Name-call, berate, belittle, as is your won’t. It will not dissuade Tesla’s mission or aid yours in the slightest.

Want the REAL numbers from Tesla, wait like everyone else! Or flail away if that’s your choice! Either way, Musk will continue to manufacture vehicles.(He’s got QUITE the backlog.)

Understand your frustration, but you and the world will be waiting Forever because Tesla does not report ANY per country end user customer numbers…PERIOD finito. insideevs tracks USA customer registration deliveries for you. There is no such thing going on nor published in China and other countries, so to keep the reality distortion field appearance of still rising Model S & X demand, which was a key determinant to its rising stock price, This IS what is going on. Tesla could report actual customer per country deliveries Like every other car maker.

Have They EVER offered a Real reason why they cannot or do not do this? NO, so you will see a bunch of BS excuses. I mean, Get Real, they don’t even have Dealers so They sell Each one Directly to buyer!

Technically they engineer great cars and push the envelope, but their ultimate judgment and stock valuation should now depend on Model 3 demand to waiting list = 0, and its quality innovation, without Blatant misdirection like this timed Truck announcement. Watch and inhale the fumes, also what happens with Sept YoY & Q3 decline – US and what can be verified from their claimed total overall